Campbell rants at Theresa for her message of unity at Easter
THERESA May was facing extraordinary criticism from diehard Remain campaigners last night after using her Easter message to suggest people are ‘coming together and uniting’ after the Brexit vote.
In a recorded message, the Prime Minister said people were starting to focus on the ‘opportunities’ created by last year’s historic vote to leave the EU rather than refighting the battles of the campaign.
But the upbeat message sparked an angry reaction from hardcore Remain campaigners who refuse to accept the outcome of the referendum.
Former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell claimed Britain had never been ‘more divided’. Mr Campbell, who
‘We won’t take sermons from Alastair Campbell’
banned Tony Blair from talking about God, also accused Mrs May of mixing politics and religion.
‘She does not exactly say if God had a vote he would have voted Leave, but she gets closer to it than she should,’ he told The Guardian. ‘If she really thinks she is leading a united country full of hope I suggest she gets out more.’
Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron suggested Mrs May’s message was fuelled by nostalgia, saying that Britain was ‘turning the clock back to the early 1970s with Brexit’.
He added: ‘I don’t want the Christian message to be stolen by the nostalgic nationalists, just as no Liberal should seek to appropriate Jesus for their own purposes either.’
Tory sources dismissed the criticism as ‘pathetic’. One said: ‘We won’t be taking any sermons from Alastair Campbell, who thinks politicians should not even be allowed to mention their faith.
‘This was a simple message that we should use moments that express our common values, like Easter, to bring people together. It is hard to see why anyone would object to that.’
In a three-minute video message, Mrs May urged people to put the arguments about Brexit behind them and focus on building a bright future outside the EU.
‘This year, after a period of intense debate over the right future for our country, there is a sense that people are coming together and uniting behind the opportunities that lie ahead,’ she said.
‘For at heart, this country is one great union of people and nations with a proud history and a bright future.
‘And as we face the opportunities ahead of us – the opportunities that stem from our decision to leave the European Union and embrace the world – our shared interests, our shared ambitions and above all our shared values can, and must, bring us together.’
Mrs May, a vicar’s daughter, also said Britain should be ‘confident about the role Christianity has to play in the lives of people in our country’.
And she spoke out in defence of religious tolerance, saying: ‘We should treasure the strong tradition that we have in this country of religious tolerance and freedom of speech.
‘We must continue to ensure that people feel able to speak about their faith, and that absolutely includes their faith in Christ.’
DOMINIC LAWSON IS AWAY
Cast your mind back to May 2016. the EU referendum is still weeks away and David Cameron is master of all he surveys.
at Buckingham Palace, the PM is filmed by tV cameras as he tells the Queen about an anti-corruption summit to be hosted at No 10.
‘actually,’ he jokes, ‘we have leaders of some fantastically corrupt countries coming. Nigeria and afghanistan, possibly the two most corrupt countries in the world.’
Not surprisingly, the Nigerian and afghan governments were less than delighted. But now they may be feeling smug.
For as the Mail’s recent investigations have shown, Mr Cameron left another notably corrupt country off that list. Its name is Britain.
On the face of it, that sounds like a wild overstatement, as by many standards we are one of the world’s least corrupt countries. Indeed, the premise of Mr Cameron’s anti-corruption summit was that Britain was ideally placed to lecture other nations on how to clean up their public affairs.
But that record looks grubby now, following revelations about the Cameron chumocracy’s relationship with Uber, the tax- dodging U.s. minicab app company.
Cover-up
as we now know, Cameron and George Osborne, backed by No 10 aides, spared no effort in their attempts to lobby London’s then mayor, Boris Johnson, to drop his plans to regulate Uber, even though it was undercutting and undermining London’s traditional black cab drivers.
Uber’s communications chief just happened to be their close friend Rachel Whetstone, who had worked with both men and is married to Mr Cameron’s former head of wacky ideas, the sandal-wearing steve Hilton. she had also been godmother to the Camerons’ late son Ivan.
this week, Ms Whetstone suddenly stood down from her job at Uber — just as the Information Commissioner’s Office had begun an investigation into an alleged cover-up by officials of links between Cameron’s No 10 team and Uber. No doubt it was a complete coincidence that she had previously worked for Google, the internet giant which reportedly had ‘revolving door’ access to No 10 despite its appalling record of ducking its British tax obligations.
Perhaps your reaction is to shrug your shoulders and say, ‘Well, that’s life.’
But I cannot be so sanguine. If this sort of thing went on in, let us say, Nigeria or afghanistan, we would call it by its proper name: corruption.
Incestuous
In truth, the tentacles of Mr Cameron’s chumocracy stretch deep into our political and financial life.
Former Chancellor George Osborne has been rewarded for his sacking by theresa May with six jobs.
Mr Osborne, who has very little journalistic experience, was recently handed the editorship of the London Evening standard. surely more disturbing, though, is his £650,000-a-year role as a consultant for the U.s. financial giant BlackRock, which, it just so happens, is one of the major investors in Uber.
Given that Mr Osborne is still a sitting MP, his shameless eagerness to cash in on his political career strikes me as downright disgraceful. But he is, alas, far from alone.
When Mr Cameron left office, almost all his former bagcarriers, rewarded with knighthoods, peerages and honours, immediately exploited their connections.
the former PM’s old tennis pal and tory party chairman andrew Feldman has since landed a job with the american consultant whom the tories employed to work on the 2015 election campaign.
Former policy aide Daniel Korski, one of the key figures in Downing street’s prostitution on behalf of Uber, has set up his own firm to advise companies on how to win public-sector contracts.
Mr Cameron’s former press chief, Craig Oliver, has landed a job for a political lobbying firm, while former aide Gabby Bertin has become head of communications for Bt.
as a rule, I find conspiracy theories pretty tiresome. But in this case I am afraid the evidence is overwhelming.
the overall picture is of a closed, corrupt, incestuous elite, a cabal of back-scratchers and nest-featherers.
Perhaps most alarmingly, they have struck an unwritten alliance with the robber barons who run the vast multinational technology firms, which wield extraordinary influence over our daily lives, have undermined traditional businesses and refuse to acknowledge the slightest accountability or social responsibility.
Was it not ever thus? I don’t think so. When Mr Cameron’s supposed hero Harold Macmillan fell from office in 1963, when Margaret thatcher resigned in 1990 and when John Major was defeated in 1997, there was no comparable grubby rush.
true, there have been examples of prime ministerial shadiness, notably Harold Wilson’s resignation honours list in 1976, which rewarded some pretty dodgy business cronies, and David Lloyd George’s flagrant auction of political honours in the early 1920s.
But Wilson and Lloyd George were poor men from provincial backgrounds whose heads had been turned by being propelled to the summit of our political life. Mr Cameron, Mr Osborne and their chums are very different.
What motivates them, I think, is an extraordinary sense of entitlement.
I doubt they and their courtiers have had a moment of self- doubt about their divine right to rule, let alone their right to win hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of pounds in taxpayers’ money — which is, after all, what lobbyists are effectively for.
We rarely think of Britain as a corrupt country. But perhaps one reason why overt corruption is so rare is that our elite need never employ anything so grubby as a bribe. For ours is the political culture of the nod and the wink, the old school tie and the university society, the gentleman’s club and the City boardroom.
a few weeks after Mr Cameron’s remark about his anti- corruption summit, the Italian investigative journalist Robert saviano, who needs round-the- clock protection because of his books exposing the Mafia, came to Britain to speak at a literary festival.
‘If I asked you what is the most corrupt place on Earth,’ Mr saviano told his audience, ‘you might tell me, well, it’s afghanistan, maybe Greece, Nigeria, the south of Italy — and I will tell you it’s the UK.’
the reason, he argued, was the influence of high finance, which exerts such sway here.
Greed
at the time, I thought he was overstating things a bit. But now I am not so sure.
Corruption is most effective, after all, when you barely notice it. No doubt Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne thought nobody would notice their quiet lobbying on behalf of Uber, and are congratulating themselves on getting away with it even now.
sadly, the state cannot plausibly regulate individual politicians’ friendships and connections or prevent them landing cushy jobs and taking advantage of their public service after they leave office.
the health of the system depends on having MPs and political aides with a sense of decency and duty, as well as a wider political culture that frowns on overt greed.
Ironically, if the torrent of revelations about the Cameron government’s cosy links with Uber do lead to a backlash against the corrupt culture of entitlement, it would surely be Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne’s greatest legacy.
after all, I’m afraid I can’t think of anything else.